William Coleman (politician)

[1] Coleman was born July 6, 1878, on a farm at Sioux City, Iowa, where his parents (father from Theresa in Dodge County; mother from Byron in Fond du Lac County) had settled in 1877.

During the year his parents returned to Wisconsin, due to a grasshopper plague and Indian disturbances, settling on a farm in Fond du Lac County, where he was educated in the public schools.

In 1908, Coleman came within nine votes of unseating incumbent Republican State Representative Herman Georgi.

[3] When elected to the Assembly in 1924, he had already been an Alderman-at-Large on the Milwaukee Common Council, and was serving as state secretary and organizer of the Socialist Party of Wisconsin.

In 1924, he succeeded fellow Socialist Albert F. Woller in the Twentieth Milwaukee County Assembly district (the 20th ward of the City of Milwaukee), defeating former State Representative Republican Charles Meising (whom Woller had unseated in 1922), 4,232 to 3,492.